First of all, this is my first post on this forum. Been here quite a few times before but never encountered anything that I couldn't fix with a little help from Google. This time around however, I can't seem to get any further, so I decided to create an account here and give it a go.

It all started a few days ago when my Mint 18.3 Cinnamon crashed. I hadn't installed anything new or anything. It just crashed. I rebooted the system (power button) and when I log back in, I'm stuck in 640x480 mode. I've installed and reinstalled the nvidia-390 driver more times than the number of fingers that I possess. Tried to reset the resolution using xrandr, but to no avail. This is the output of my inxi -G:

Also tried going back to the nouveau (also submitted this to the Guinness World Records for most difficult driver name to spell), but that didn't work either.
I have used nvidia-xconfig to try to recreate the /etx/X11/xorg.conf file, nothing happens. If it's any help, the "gpu-manager" is inactive (dead). I don't know what it is or if it was active before or not, but I can't seem to get it to work either. (Don't even know if that's the main issue).

The monitor and graphics card do support 1920x1080. I've run mint for months on this machine without any problems.

Last but not least, i have a TV hooked up to the graphics card as well, but I tried unplugging it and plugging it ba... you know the drill. Nothing works.

What to do guys? Thanks in advance! By the way, I would love it if there was a way to fix this without reinstalling the OS.

Last edited by atquin on Tue Jun 05, 2018 4:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Thanks for the reply. I tried that, but I get the same result. I even tried installing nvidia-current which is nvidia-304 for some reason. The weird part is I've used 390 since it got released, and there's never been a problem before. Do you have any other suggestions?

UPDATE

Alright, so I realized that there was a driver called nvidia-396, a new and better one, I presumed. I tried installing it, thinking it might work. It got worse. I turned on error messages on my GRUB screen thingey so that it tells me exactly what goes on behind the curtains at start up. It looks something like this:

Now, this sneaky little mothercuddler tells me that if I run systemctl status lightdm.service it's gonna tell me what's wrong, but now I can't do anything because I don't get a command prompt when I press <Ctrl> + <Alt> + F1. Can't reboot with <Ctrl> + <Alt> + <Delete> either, which I'm always able to do during boot otherwise. Same thing happens when I try to boot into recovery mode. What kind of dark sorcery is this?! Never happened to me before that I ended up in a situation where I get to the point where I literally can't do anything.

Now, I do have access to an old Mint CD. If I live boot, is there anything I can do from there?

UPDATE 2

Alright, gut the TTY back by booting into recovery mode, forcing root permissions and purging nvidia* and lightdm. Installed them both but still no GUI. Issiung systemctl status lightdm.service, it tell me that lightdm is inactive (dead), not found, failed with an exit-code, service was held off and what not. All at once! This is officially worse than my ex. Stuck in the TTY and got no clue how to solve it.

UPDATE 3

Alright, so I gave up on lightdm and installed mdm. I'm now back at square one. 640x480 resolution. Still, gpu-manager is not running. Don't know if it should be? I get this error:

Thanks for the reply. I tried that, but I get the same result. I even tried installing nvidia-current which is nvidia-304 for some reason. The weird part is I've used 390 since it got released, and there's never been a problem before. Do you have any other suggestions?

It's not so weird, drivers get deprecated in Linux. The recommended driver from Mint Driver Manager is usually the best choice.

Alright, so I realized that there was a driver called nvidia-396, a new and better one, I presumed. I tried installing it, thinking it might work. It got worse.

You can't assume in Linux that a newer driver will be better unless it's very new hardware you're using.

You'd think that if a driver gets deprecated there should be a new stable driver to replace it! I mean, the 390 has been working for months without and problem, and now suddenly it crashes and can't be replaced by the 396? It just doesn't make sense to me... It's a normal GeForce card, nothing out of the ordinary.

There must be something else going on. Anyway, I found out that the gpu-manager isn't even supposed to run, so that trail leads nowhere. I did however find out that it gets worse when I configure Xorg using nvidia-xconfig. If I don't issue that command and just install the drivers, xrandr allows me to set a resolution of 1152x864. Not quite 1080p, but I guess I'm getting closer... Or not